Think local, act local... but is it local enough? That’s the gap Shriram Adukoorie looked to fill when he launched AskLaila - a local information website in 2007. After a successful year in Bangalore, laila is now available in five major cities. And even on your mobile phone.
Shriram Adukoorie, co-founder, AskLaila, says: "We still feel that a vast majority of people don't go online to search. They end up asking friends/ family. We feel that there is lot of potential in the market, which is currently underserved at this point of time.
Eyeing this potential, new players like Yulop (pronounced You Loop) are redefining the meaning of local. In addition to local search, youloop offers a Bangalore community citizen portal, a Kannada book store and a site on local events in the city. Sridhar, CEO, Yulop, is not getting caught up with the profitability of the venture and wants to first build a strong user base.
Sridhar says: On the mobile and web, you eventually got to be going with ads but for that to happen, we focused on getting the content first. You got to follow the rule. Get the users first, and business follows you.
Players like Asklaila and Yulop will take on biggies like Google and Yahoo, which have launched their own local search websites. Yahoo says the market is still very nascent as users are still getting used to the local search model.
Sridhar Ranganathan, business head (local & maps), Yahoo! India, says: "We are still in early days. We are still waiting for traction in terms of user need. We are seeing a lot of uptake in terms of the features we are showing...."
Using the yellow pages for getting local information might soon be a thing of the past as Internet and mobile companies are aggresively marketing their services. They are even choosing to ignore monetising their services for now to purely focus on scaling up.
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